A solid first work.

The album showcases the band's pop proclivities while preserving the dark, often harsh, atmospherics that makes their sound so distinct.

Mellow and breezy, Spelled in Bones has “summer record” written all over it, with its warm, gentle pop melodies that would make Paul McCartney proud.

The sound isn’t youthful, nor does it try to be. To Del, the quintessential alternative hip-hop artist, and Tame, underground hip-hop mainstay, the panacea to the apparent predicament of age is craftsmanship.

Simply put, this album is more than pretty good.

It may not have the knockout highs that Dual Hawks or Flashes and Cables had, but it is just as consistent all the way through.

The free-for-all collective sound can lend the music a cutesy air, but the intensity of the songs rescues the album from juvenility.

The most apt comparison would be Dylan's more recent comeback albums; if not quite the masterpiece of Love and Theft, it beats the hell out of anything McCartney, Jagger or Simon have put out in the last fifteen years.

Other than on "Answers to Your Questions," it's not real pretty when O'Rourke steps to the microphone. Most of his songs stab at a Tom Waits-style balladry but end up sounding more like schmaltzy Steely Dan castoffs.

Like all Gogol Bordello albums, Trans-Continental Hustle is instantly enjoyable, but even more lyrical and musical layers emerge on repeat listens that show you just how smart and (simple) Gogol Bordello can be.

In a genre that’s desperate for new ideas, Allien’s lack of advancement on Thrills makes for a little less enjoyment.

There are moments when the ambivalence toward everything sounds like it might, just might, be giving way to genuine concern.

The sanitized production can be a bit of a stumbling block, and Rogue occasionally gets ahead of himself with his high-spire vocals, but Descended Like Vultures is by and large not the sophomore slump such and such and so and so were expecting.

Free at Last is everything that his heads could want.

Hella are a band reinvigorated on Tripper, realizing and embracing with all of their arms (a run through any of the tracks here definitely makes it sounds like they each have more than two) the sounds that absolutely work best for them while showcasing their growth as songwriters and the experiences they've picked up from their myriad side projects.

Gently blurring the lines between the warm golden haze of pedal-steel’d country rock with elements of tasteful, classicist new wave, the quietly intimate Cardinology jettisons the schizoid, freewheeling genre-hopping of previous records, giving the album--and, most important, the songs--an intensity of focus where there was once just intensity.

Despite the missteps, the band still emanates a certain cheekiness that's rare these days, especially for a lot of oh-so-serious psych outfits.

Whether or not you think antipathy and self-destruction are legitimate themes for music, or you feel that even the pretty remote handling of rap that Salem has done as three white kids is too much, you can't dismiss what started all this hub-bub in the first place: the fact that the trio has crafted a sound that still doesn't really sound like anything else. Whatever else it does, King Night stays true to that.

Little Joy never really breaks out of its mostly grey color scheme, and is an album that could test the patience of many, but these do not seem like things that concern My Disco in the slightest.

The album sticks very much to the template of ambient keyboard pop and an atmosphere of disappointment that past Lali Puna and Notwist albums traded in. That said, it's effective in what it sets out to accomplish and has a silent ambition that is fairly admirable.

With about half the tracks on this record falling short, Skinner would seem to be teetering on the edge of irrelevance. But even the failed tracks here sound interesting, and if he's lost his way somewhat thematically, it's all in the name of searching for his new voice.

The real problem with Stars is that the most poignant, affecting songs sound like natural, and somewhat neutral, follow-ups to his other songs.

Loud, brash, but never cocksure, Mantaray swaggers like a cat in heat.

Congratulations shares nary a sonic smidgen with Oracular Spectacular, instead existing in a netherworld where mod-era psychedelia meets prog-rock and where the ecstatic heights of the band's debut don't exist.

Luckily, Blackenedwhite, the first post-Odd Future hype machine album, is still as good as it was eight months ago, when it came out and was instantly the most fun album in the Odd Future oeuvre. It's a triumph of two kids putting all of their efforts into an album, and coming out with something great.

The listenability of the second-half might leave hip-hop heads indifferent, often feeling just too full of glossy pop, no matter how solid Plug 1 and Plug 2 continue to rap twenty-five years into their career.

By this point, it's within their rights to utilize pieces of their past in building a new present for themselves, as long as they don't half-ass it and start turning out inferior remakes of their old tunes. That's not what's going on here, and if anything, No Line is ultimately a more visceral and memorable effort than either of the band's other two 21st century offerings.

When the proudly worn tropes – the irascible low-life characters, the working-class heroes – show up to break up the life-affirming stuff on Dream, they're an afterthought (the jokey “Outlaw Pete”) or worse (heretofore never to be mentiond again "Queen of the Supermarket" is, well, really fucking terrible). That's why the finest moment of the album is "The Wrestler."